Bow Roundabout update #25 Last week I told you that a wedge of raised tarmac on Stratford High Street had been removed, immediately adjacent to the contraflow beneath the flyover that's never been opened. "All it needs now is a repaint," I said. Well, that repaint has now happened. I know it may not look like it because the arrow and hatched area are still visible, but unwanted white lines are hard to get rid of. Previously all eastbound traffic leaving the Bow Roundabout was funnelled into a…

By David Tuller, DrPH George Monbiot, the British investigative journalist and longtime contributor to The Guardian, has written a corker of a column about the mistreatment and abuse of people with ME/CFS, including those with Long COVID. This newest piece follows two of Monbiot’s previous Guardian essays—in March, 2024, and October, 2024–that were equally blunt […]

A quintessential view of Southern California. We dropped someone off at LAX and stopped at the In-N-Out Burger right at the edge of the north runway. It's a perfect place to photograph planes landing, they are only a couple of hundred feet off the ground. It's Instabae, as they say in Japanese, a place perfectly designed for likes on Instagram; and there were plenty of visiting hipsters posing for their followers. I brightened the photo and erased some light poles. But other than that, this is…

The Class 14 "Teddy Bear" has, to my eyes, always been an attractive loco. Sadly, it was a bit of a failure - the traffic it was designed to handle was fading away as the locos were delivered. This video covers it nicely, with some well-researched archive footage. But, the highlight for me is at 12:50, when we see a self-propelled rail-mounted Coles crane batting along a bit of track. I don't recall seeing one of these in action before, and it can certainly move!I built a static model of this…

Since experimenting with Codex, and now Muse, I have been exploring an interaction pattern for use alongside chat-based systems which I think makes sense to call Generative Control Surfaces (based on Muse’s suggestion). Codex offers the following short definition: Generative control surfaces are an interaction design pattern in which an AI system creates a task-specific graphical interface during ongoing work, connects it to retained task state, and adapts it as the work changes. I set up a…

This ei what I’ll be taking about, and how to organize samples. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DdsBDZXh-6G/?stkn=bmVsYjQ1cTl6bWNy

As I was delightscrolling through the fediverse today, I came across this post with a close-up photo of a Palm IIIc synchronizing some email, and it made me realize how much I missed low-resolution displays. I'm thinking about how the rarity of a thing can increase its value, such as with diamonds (which are a huge racket), as they are actually not that rare, but production is tightly controled by a near-monopoly to keep the prices very high. And somehow, I think we appreciated pixels more when…

Some fun creepy pasta over here.

The Whisper Man: “A thriller that’s as generic as its title, The Whisper Man is a tremendous waste of talent in front of and behind the camera in service of an idiotic story that only grows more frustrating with every ludicrous, but predictable twist.” — Andrew Parker, Out of Time Reviews Teh Vvaan: “Some films are bad. Some are terrible. And some are pure torture. The Vvaan falls neatly into that third category, in which I struggled to find a single redeeming feature, and failed…

Happy Saturday, everyone! Here on Global Nerdy, Saturday means that it’s time for another “picdump” — the weekly assortment of amusing or interesting pictures, comics, and memes I found over the past week. Share and enjoy! Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot The post Saturday picdump for Saturday, September 26 appeared first on Global Nerdy.

Subservient transport news TfL sent out nine press releases this week which I shall now present in a grovelling subservient way, just as the PR team intended. 🚧 The Gallows Corner flyover has fully reopened to traffic following major refurbishment work. "Major strengthening and refurbishment work ensures the flyover can continue serving Londoners for years to come." Well done TfL, only twelve months late, what an excellent job you've done. 🚡 London Cable Car cabins will be illuminated in pink…

It seems tough for everyone… This is the kind of show where everyone is a piece of shit and they all get what’s coming to them. And I am so there for it. It’s a fun time if you enjoy that sort of humor. Honestly, not the best produced show, and probably went a bit too far into the serious side, but overall a fun time. Storytelling – B – It was funny most of the time. Voice – C – Some interesting ideas but setting feels pretty half-assed (intentionally so but still) Characters – B – God… these…

The posts have been shorter lately because I've been doing most of my writing and editing in other areas. There have been developments in my Kenny story, but there's also a new one that is about someone named Mickey. The first thousand or so words of that happened out of nowhere last night. It's different. It feels horny, violent, and fun. 🌲 gonna 🌼 go 🌱 touch hang with 🌳 grass Kenny and Mickey 🌷 now Be good to yourself. If you enjoyed this post, click the little up arrow chevron thinger below…

We knew things were going to be tough upon Grandma getting home, but I'm sure either one of us were expecting just how difficult things were going to be. It hasn't even been a single night and already we're starting to realize the magnitude of Grandma's condition. It's basically to the point now that she needs help getting up, hard-assistance walking and the whole lot. The idea of her becoming independent to the point that she could prepare her own meals is completely out the window. She can't…

A salaryman has a crush on a cashier. He smokes behind the supermarket with her but somehow thinks it’s a different person. Grossness of smoking aside, I think it’s pretty cute. They are both kind of annoyingly oblivious. But if they actually get together quickly that would be a lot less fun. I do also enjoy the minor dramas— like an annoying customer, the falling out with an old mentor. I feel like more “slice of life” type anime would benefit from some small amount of conflict like this to…

Styling Tables the Modern CSS Way I learned a few tricks from Michelle Barker. I mixed her tricks with Adrian’s low effort responsive tables on a recent project. Signals #006: The Floor and the Ceiling Christopher dwells on what mastery and taste means as the access to design through LLMs is open to all. An Ode to Links We make links. Links make the web. The web makes Us. I wonder, how we will be talking in next 10 years. The years of closed web.

It’s short notice, but I got the call to play on short notice too! I’ll be joining Tom Hood, playing good ol’ classic rock and folk tunes — him on ukulele, me on accordion, plus various other musicians — at The Honu, a fantastic tiki bar in Dunedin at 2:30 p.m.! My plan is to show up at least an hour or more before the show to get a loco moco and an ube colada. If you’re in the area, drop by, say hi, have a drink or some food and enjoy some tunes! The post Playing LIVE at the Honu: Saturday,…

BILL PRONZINI “Hooch,” First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, June 2014. Quite possibly collected but the whereabouts at present are not known. Time: Prohibition Era in the US. Place: Somewhere along the Northern California coastline. Players: Three hoodlums in one truck are helping bring in a shipment of fine liquor from Canada. Two are old pros at the job. The third, by the name of Bennie. is a young fellow whose first job this is. He doesn’t seem nervous. Antsy, maybe. There is…

Subway Action – New York, New York I constantly take motion-blur pictures of trains, not just subways in New York City. I’ve probably shot something similar in almost every place I’ve been to, especially in Japan. There are lots of trains in Japan. However, I like this picture a little more than usual because there is something more going on. My goal for these types of pictures is to get a nice blur of the train coming into the station. I shoot them so that I can see its face about halfway…

Today was the first day of our little 4 day vacation in the nothern part of the state! It was a pretty simple day. My partner drove their family and I (4 of us total) about 3½ hours. It was fairly smooth, just a stop for food and another reststop! I got a hot cocoa from the gas station and it was quite nice! Then we got to the hotel, and right after my partner drove me to a local card shop for the reality fracture pre-release! I got my kit, and built a pretty decent black green deck with a red…

In a corner of the gallery at the Et al. bookstore in SF

I fixate on an idea. Doesn’t matter how they get into my head. There’s certainly a fulcrum past which I’m clearly going to spend a few days, not at my workbench, not being myself creative; lurking around for sale sites... Read More ›

"I want to have done that." A single phrase that changed how I look at life. Thanks, Debbie Ryan on yet another episode of Last Meals that fundamentally shifted my worldview. Sometimes it's really easy to get caught up in the present and forget to give the future its due diligence. The kind of attention it would have in a world where the present didn't feel so... fragile. Let me start with things aren't all bad. All things considered, we're not in the worst spot we could be. Some things have…

Win of the week: I was the errandinest and it paid off — got my cat a new catnip toy and they gave me a 30% off coupon for litter; picked up supplies for making apple crisp and snagged a ‘manager’s special’ whole meal for $2.70; returned my interlibrary loan on time; then filled up the car and got fifty cents a gallon off gas from grocery rewards points (originally $5.90/gal 🤪) Looking forward to: V for Vendetta‘s going to be in theaters for its 20-year anniversary! Pretty sure I didn’t see it…

So, remember last Weeknote when I said I changed mailing list providers? I just did it again. The one I used for the previous mailing had so many ads in it, it ruined the newsletter. I took a slightly nerdier route to get a new one set up that should look nice and clean, no ads. September’s been a busy month with lots of moving parts, but there’s been some fun stuff along the way. This week, my wife got to meet a cousin from her father’s side of the family that she connected with through DNA…

In general, you should be suspicious of engineers who are trying to give you advice. Even during ordinary times, this industry is so wide and changes so quickly that nobody really knows anything for sure. And we are not in ordinary times. The advent of LLMs and AI agents is the largest change to software engineering in my professional lifetime, and possibly the largest change ever. That said, here’s my advice: Don’t trust senior engineers who are telling you to pick political fights Don’t play…

In our last episode I enjoyed a story by Clare Winger Harris that debuted in Weird Tales, "A Runaway World," a tale full of science and scientists as well as horror and death that I thought conformed to the expectations of a traditional science fiction story as much or more to what we expect of a weird story. So let's read three Harris pieces from steadfastly science-oriented magazines edited by science fiction pioneer Hugo Gernsback. All three of these stories were reprinted in the 1947 Harris…

It still gives me a big grin when you open a model and then later go to your printer and there is the actual thing in real life as it were.